Skipper of crew stranded on ice pan hails rescuers

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The skipper of a crab-fishing boat whose crew used an ice pan to stay alive on Sunday is deeply impressed by the search and rescue team that brought him and his colleagues to safety in Newfoundland's Notre Dame Bay.

"We just struck a little bit of ice there. I guess I put one through her," said Lorne Fudge, describing how the DLL Venture ran into trouble while the crew was returning from the crab grounds.

"I couldn't wish for a hundred per cent better. I was surprised," said Fudge, adding that his expectations have been coloured by wait times that have sometimes dogged SAR operations in Atlantic Canada.

"I was surprised after some of the news I was after hearing … I figured it was going to be a while before I got help, but I turned out to be wrong," Fudge said in an interview with CBC Radio'sFisheries Broadcast. "They reacted really quickly."

Fudge said with night falling, crew members expected a much longer wait as they took their life raft and provisions with them. They even set a fire on a smaller pan of ice near them, to help other boats find them.

Time was tight as the DLL Venture quickly took on water.

"It was only a matter of two or three minutes that the engine was under water," Fudge said.